Serendipity

[j d worthington]

This one is an odd thread for me, and may belong as well in the Lounge area (or at least SFF Lounge), but as it is on the subject of books and opens it to discussions of such, well....

When I first moved back to Austin in March 2006, I stopped by an old favorite among the book stores here, and found on their $1 shelves outside an odd two-volume set titled Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petræa and the Holy Land, published in 1841. I picked it up because it looked like an interesting little oddity, I had some vague memory of having heard of it in connection with the sorts of travel books published in the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, and at a dollar for the set, I simply couldn't pass it up. But it was a minor curiosity, nothing more.

Recently I've been going through Poe again, adding in anything I could find from various sources, including a lot of his criticism which is now available online; when, lo and behold! I find that he did a review of the original edition of this one (mine is a tenth edition, published four years later). Suddenly that one has moved up the TBR list considerably, as I am now quite curious. I'd never known about the connection to one of my favorite writers (having read only spottily in Poe's critical articles so far), so I consider this a genuine case of serendipity, and simply think it is rather neat -- if very bookwormish.

My question, and the subject of this thread, is: how many of you have had a similar experience; that is, picking up a book on a whim and later finding it had some such association to a favorite writer, subject, or period, thereby greatly enhancing your pleasure in having such an item on your shelves. The connection does not, of course, have to critical; it can be of any nature; but to qualify, it must be something you were completely unaware of at the time you picked it up.

This may be one of those things where very few people have had such an experience; or it may be extremely common. I'm just curious which, and would like to hear any stories others have on the subject....

 

[Sparrow]

Not serendipitous so much as synchronicity at work, or just an unnerving coincidence of events. Years back I lived just blocks away from a shabby secondhand bookstore which I visited rarely; the smell of old books is depressing to me so I had little desire to frequent too often a shop that housed thousands of them, and there was the matter of the owner. He was by appearance a charming old fellow, friendly, a good conversationalist, with a great talent for getting me to buy books I didn't really want. The store was also filled with various knick knacks that from time to time he would try to sell as a companion piece to whatever book you might be eyeing. But my girlfriend and I had just bought our first real house and I wanted some leatherbound classics for a very modest collection, so I overlooked the pushy owner and the smell of old books.

Just this one time, in hopes of missing the annoying owner, I called ahead to see if they had Treasure Island. I was interested in either a Franklin Press or Easton Press edition, and they had both. I decided on the Franklin Press, we agreed on a price, and I said I'd be by next week to gather it up.
The following week I swung by, $40 in hand, and with every intent to go in, collect my book, and leave without fanfare. I walked through the door. Ahhh good, I thought, the owner was out with just a college student holding the fort (the same person I had talked to over the phone). I told him I was here to pickup a book and he quickly located a large manila envelope with my name and $40 scribbled in pencil on the back. There was one slight problem, the envelope had a big lump in it. I inquired what might the lump be as I had some doubts as to it being a book. The kid told me he hadn't packaged it so he wasn't sure what it was and asked if I had ordered anything else. Well I hadn't so he opened the package and pulled out a small figurine of a winged griffin, curled up and sleeping on a pedestal. I should have instantly recognized the sculpture but at the time I was getting a little pissy, so it didn't register.

I asked the college student, who was as confused as me, to call the owner. He said that wasn't possible as he had suffered a stroke at his home the previous week and was in serious condition at the hospital. Well, that sort of drained me of all pissyness and I turned the sculpture over to see if there was a price on it. There was. The sticker had $20 written in pencil... and it's not as though it was ugly, on the contrary it was a nicely rendered miniature statue of a mythical beast that seemed somehow familiar. I told him to put it back in the envelope and gave him $40 cash and wrote a check for the additional $20.

Upon returning home I removed the figurine, and now it hit me.
This wasn't just any curled up sleeping griffin, it was Gryphon from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I was positive of this because I had the bloody thing tattooed on my chest some twenty years earlier! At this point I'm getting a little creeped out and decide to open the other manila envelope that contained the book.

I'll give you three guesses (and the first two don't count) to what book was inside that envelope.
I've since gotten the Franklin Press edition of Treasure Island on eBay, just to spite the old man.

 

[The Judge]

Not on a whim, since the intention to buy was deliberate, so I don't know if this counts, but yes a connection I hadn't envisaged.

After reading some good reviews, I bought Claire Harman's biography Fanny Burney. Very well written and I enjoyed it a good deal. But as I was reading about Burney's friendship with Hester Thrale and her family I kept getting odd brain-nudges of the 'I've read this somewhere before' type. I'd heard of Thrale's friendship with Samuel Johnson, but I hadn't read any Johnson biogs, or any other contemporary work which dealt with them, so it was a real puzzle. Thrale's daughter, also called Hester but usually known as Queeney, was particularly bugging me -- her nickname, the fact of her great learning, her estrangement from her mother when she (mother) took up with the Catholic Gabriel Piozzi and then married him, Queeney becoming Viscountess Keith...

Then I clicked. Patrick O'Brian's Master & Commander - Queeney is Jack Aubrey's one-time maths tutor and now wife of Admiral Keith whose influence gets Jack his command.

I knew that O'Brian had been meticulous in his research of the period, and I knew that all the political and naval figures would be real, but -- stupidly perhaps -- this was a real revelation that he had used a relatively obscure historical figure in this way. Oddly enough, finding the connection like this actually enhanced my pleasure in both books, not just the O'Brian - almost as if I kept expecting Jack to wander into the biography at some point. Though I suppose the 'I was clever enough to get the in-joke' was part of it, too!

J

 

[blacknorth]

I don't know if this qualifies, but it appears like serene luck to me.

I've been wanting to do some research for an alternative history I'd like to write about one of the Celtic nations - Ireland or Scotland - but I could find precious little fiction on the same subject. Perhaps that's why I wanted to write it.

Anyway, last week I bought New Worlds 162 from a seller at ebay, mostly because I wanted Bob Shaw's story Pilot Plant in its original published form. And, lo - the fourth story in the issue is a thing called Unification Day by George Collyn, set in the Province d'Ecosse - Scotland as a province of Imperial France.

Oddly Collyn uses his own name for the narrator. Maybe he's warning me off.

 

[j d worthington]

I'd say it applies. As for his using his own name... that was not at all uncommon with the writers of the time in the New Wave; for instance, Disch's "The Squirrel Cage" comes to mind immediately....

And thank you to all sharing your stories here. Very interesting indeed....

 

[blacknorth]

A the moment I'm reading Eric Brown's novella A Writer's Life which appears to be a strange embellishment of serendipity. It takes all those bibliographical observations and coincidences and spins them into a SF/horror tale with romantic underpinnings.

Well worth checking out.

 

[j d worthington]

Thanks for the suggestion; I'll have to see if I can't track down a copy sometime soon....

 

[blacknorth]

I'll have to see if I can't track down a copy sometime soon....

lol... exactly.

 

[Rob Hasson]

I have found that the Readers Digest 'Folklore, Myths & Legends of Great Britain' that I bought as a teen-ogre in the early 70s has been an invaluable return reference in many subsequent fantasy reads.

Another serendipity tale related to this tome. I had lost my copy in one of my very many moves. I had little joy in subsequent attempts to find another copy. In Hay on Wye some years ago, I recounted my attachment to the book and sorrow at its loss to my girlfriend. In the next bookshop we stepped into she called as I crossed the threshold behind her, of the first book that her eyes fell upon, "Is it this one?"

Reunited at last!